'White Gold'- The Tale of Running onto the WBA pitch for Len Cantello's Tie-up's...

13 is an impressionable age.

Your heroes become more permanent, less fleeting.

You develop more depth of reasoning that sometimes adds up to emulation.

For me, that was Len.

Football was less exotic 50 years ago, one national team for me was a particular oasis of football of invention and art.

Who wouldn’t be moved by watching Holland, a summer prior to the ‘tie ups tale’?

A beautiful term of phrase being lovingly cultured, seemingly simple, but seldom bettered, and absolutely matching their verve and ability.

'Total Football.'

Of course there is an Albion angle here with ex-boss and visionary, Vic Buckingham being instrumental in this Dutch methodology.

But at The Albion, your heroes were less evident, if you were, like me, a dreamer of that purist ideal.

And as a newly turned teen, the look and character also counted..

That’s why I gravitated to Len..

These were different times at The Albion, the previous year selling the brilliantly gifted Asa Hartford to Man City, left a gulf in the dreams of a fan like me.

I was never the realist, always the dreamer.

I loved Asa as a player, but could I be Asa on the pitch myself?

An affirmative no.

Asa was far too neat on the ball and skillfully adroit.

I could be Len though.

I could work harder than anyone.

Pass the ball well.

Tackle like my life depended on it.

Score the occasional goal.

Len ‘played for the shirt’, decades before that term was invented.

And with that 'shock of blonde hair', often illuminating a dull, poorly attended Albion match, as the early/mid 70’s Hawthorns often was, you can see why, even now, Cantello is so loved.

The enduring legacy of Len.

By the summer of ‘75, things were changing fast at The Albion.

Three weeks from playing in the European Cup Final, when Leeds were probably robbed by some very poor officiating v Bayern Munich, amazingly, in my eyes, one of their iconic players, John Giles, took over the reigns at The Hawthorns, to the point of disbelief from me.

I knew Giles very well.

My dad was a Brian Clough fan and going to The Baseball Ground with him, I saw many of those infamous Derby v Leeds games as a Junior School lad.

They were only scratching the surface when they made The Damned United.

The enmity was ritual hatred.

It was X rated and Giles never took a prisoner.

But boy could he pass the ball.

And the Chelsea home game was to be Giles' baptism on the pitch for The Albion.

The opening '75/76 Albion fixture was a three goal thumping away to Southampton, with Giles taking a watching brief, oddly enough the Baggies sub that day was Bomber Brown.

Giles clearly valued the need to keep the ball, so fatefully for this upcoming Chelsea match was the first time Cantello, Giles, Tony Brown, and an 18 year old Geordie prospect John Trewick were allied in midfield.

Things could be looking up.

Traveling to The Hawthorns from Burton in the mid 1970's was never easy, particularly night matches, as the pressure of missing the last train home was always in the back of your mind.

And simply we never spoke about a Plan B.

No one was driving to Birmingham from Burton to pick us up at midnight.

A taxi home was wildly out of our budget.

One train, two buses later, through the suburbs of a large, urban, ethnic city that I actually barely knew, you reached The Hawthorns.

For night matches the floodlights would resonate that eternal light of enticement for the conflict ahead.

First thing you did after getting off the bus was to find a Programme Seller and buy The Albion News.

For 12p.

Your window to life at The Hawthorns, for this first home game, you had one photo on this match programme cover of a smiling player.

Of course for this game, it had to be..

Len..

This was a sultry August summer’s night, against Chelsea in their second game in Division 2 in twelve seasons.

The exotic days of the Kings Road and the likes of Peter Osgood were a mirage now, probably not better illustrated by the contrast to the flamboyant Ossie, in the new incumbent in the blues No.9 shirt.

Bill Garner.

I arrived early at The Hawthorns and was one of just under 18,000 supporters 'half filling' the ground, but that was the malaise The Albion was in.

It was an attendance not to be surpassed at home until the first of the festive fixtures, just over four months later against of all teams?

Orient.

But as fate would have it, December 27th 1975 was a pivotal date beyond belief in the subsequent history of West Brom.

How fateful would it be that the biggest home crowd of the Albion season until that point, would witness their first viewing of this opposition No.7?

A player who would change Albion’s history forever.

Laurie Cunningham.

Getting into the ground early for a teen like me, meant securing your spot in the Brummie Road and waiting.

Waiting is just what we did.

Pre game entertainment for me was only piqued after that Orient No.7 signed for us.

To see Laurie warm up was worth the ticket price alone, as any Baggie of a certain ilk would tell you.

To recall every aspect of a game 50 years ago is difficult, but I was genuinely intrigued at seeing how Len would play against a lad who went to my school in Burton and a legend in my home town, Garry Stanley.

But it wasn’t going to be the ‘Starsky’ [cult US detective show back then, Starsky and Hutch] lookalike that Len would end up tangling with.

It was to be Bill.

17 Minutes in, we were playing well, maybe Len was putting out a marker to his new boss partnering him in midfield, that he, like Giles, wasn’t to be messed about with?

Cantello passes the ball, [Giles team was always and forever about smart possession], Bill Garner follows in with a late challenge. 

Len kicks out in retaliation.

Maybe Bill was still ruing being omitted after being named in the original '84 man' England squad, [yes you are reading that right!], Don Revie had bizarrely called up a few months before, and wanted to leave a mark on Len?

The referee, Tony Glasson, [who you’d generously call middle aged], had seen enough.

Indeed it was to be the only name penciled in the Glasson notebook all game.

Cantello was off.

I can clearly recall Len's anger, disbelief and disgust.

Not the greatest gift to your new manager, put your team 'under the cosh' for 73 Minutes, down a player to what may be perceived as petulance, but the Brummie Rd faithful were indeed livid.

Industrial language abounded.

But I wasn’t really listening.

I was looking.

The shake of Len’s head.

The untying of his white socks.

The throwing of the tie ups.

The short walk up to the tunnel.

But it was the tie-ups that transfixed.

White Gold.

Fate informs.

The rest of the game was the first test of Giles organizational skills.

10 v 11.

We weren’t going to win.

We weren’t going to score.

After all, 34 year old Geoff Hurst was No.9..

But Giles could organize.

We could stymie.

We could pass.

Giles DNA was starting to emerge.

But truly the game passed me by.

I could only look at those tie ups.

And wonder.

How many other Baggies fans in the Brummie Rd had similar, illicit ideas?

Bigger, older fans, who I’d never out sprint.

But maybe I could out think?

Ownership was as they say, 9/10’s of the law, and I needed to make it 100%.

Mine.

Half time came and went.

Ironically, the tie-ups were located adjacent to the Baggies bench.

Brian Whitehouse, George Wright and substitute Ally Brown returned to the dug out.

Albion’s ground staff seemed to have no desire to remove those 'white scars of war', from the pitch.

Even as the floodlights came on and the gorgeous illumination of first game grass evocatively resonated, the discarded cotton strips remained.

Albion earned their draw, the midfield gelled, passed and pressed

Bill Garner could fool one Baggie, but he’s not fooling Ally Robertson or John Wile.

More importantly, WBA had passed its first test of carrying forward the Giles mantra.

He’d been there.

He’d done it.

He’d be the turning point new signing for The Baggies.

Let Giles lead.

At full time, I was certain, someone would beat me to the tie ups.

Someone older.

Someone braver.

I was never one to break the law, and the sight of police behind the goals plus the Baggies stewards, meant any attempt to get on the pitch, in my eyes was forlorn.

But IF I waited.

Like any striker, it’s in the moment.

Take the chance.

Missing the last train to Burton was a scenario I couldn’t bear to imagine, but as I said to my brother, 

“If’ we wait..”

Just a little..

The faithful left The Hawthorns, somewhat cheated that we were ‘Lenless’ for so long, but relieved we’d come away with our first point of the season.

And as the crowd drifted away, so did the police and the stewards.

And so did an opportunity, open up.

I vividly remember climbing the Brummie Rd fence, my mind thinking about a WW2 escape film.

Lights from the towers.

Each step closer to the place of no return.

Heart in the mouth, heart accelerating to many beats per minute..

But the risk was worth the prize…

As I landed on the turf, stealth came a very distant second place to that other S word.

Speed..

I’m not sure how much adrenalin can be omitted by a 13 year old, but I scorched the earth with the afterburners of the Baggies winger that day, Willie Johnston.

I may have only been a 45 yard run, but there was no going back.

Only forward.

Picking up those tie ups was as close to a connection as I was ever going to get to Len, and part of Len was going back to Burton..

In some ways, entering The Hawthorns pitch became the perfect crime..

No one saw me.

No one said a word.

I didn’t return with haste back to the empty Brummie Rd terraces to be reunited with my brother.

I walked.

Slowly.

Not looking at the ground, the pitch, or the floodlights.

But I gazed at my hand.

Containing the booty.

White gold.

Len had lost.

Albion and Chelsea had drawn.

I had won.

So my prized tie ups went back to Burton, pride of place in a drawer in my bedside cabinet.

Cotton never ages.

Neither does memory or emotion of this day of days, half a century ago.